When I first read “Twelfth Night”
there was a character that drew my attention because he was apparently placed
away from the other characters. He was not, however, excluded from the action of
the play though he was, in a way, distinct from the rest, as if playing under
different rules or being moved by a different motivation. This character was the
clown and servant of the Countess Olivia, Feste. I found him extremely
interesting from the very beginning, which is not difficult since he stands out
from the rest. The way he speaks is unusual, and so are his manners, acting too
freely for a servant. Besides, due to the fact of being a licensed clown, he is
allowed to criticize or ridicule other character’s behavior, and it is through
this device that we get to a deeper understanding of the play and its figures.
Feste provides the audience with an insight into the characters of the play and,
at the same time, with a greater knowledge of himself.

In this paper I will analyze Feste’s
uniqueness as a character and the importance of his role inside the play. I will
examine those traits that make him move away from the other figures and try to
sketch a portrayal of this clown Shakespeare presents us here. I am also very
interested in the way Feste conforms to the norm of the archetypical fool of
comedies and to what point he withdraws from it. At a first glance Feste may
look just like the other fools we have come across in Elisabethan literature: a
fool whose only task is to entertain his audience (usually nobles), a
superficial clown who makes fun of everything but only looks at the cover of it.
From our background information of what a clown is and what he represents within
a comedy, we may wrongly expect Feste to be a jolly supporting character, rather
flat and dispensable.However, his
attitude is at times sadder, at times more melancholic (this is clearly patent
throughout his songs) and, even, a little more malevolent than we may have
anticipated. Again, Shakespeare’s greatness makes its appearance on stage and
fools us by presenting something completely different from what we would expect,
playing with the traditional concepts of theater and its characters.

Finally, I will compare Feste with
Puck from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, who was the character I chose for my
first paper. The fact that I had to set the first character against the second
one was also one of the reasons why I decided to choose Feste. He reminded me of
Puck in a subtle but strong way, overall in the way they both move away from our
expectations of what their attitudes should be, setting a difference between
themselves and the traditional stereotype of their characters. Both of them also
depart from the image they deliver at the beginning of both plays, that is, a
second look is required in order to distinguish their exceptional way of being.
Feste is a jester and Puck a joker, and they resemble each other more than we
may think, though differ at certain points. What I am most interested in is to
what extent they are similar and in what aspects they are different, and whether
this will lead them to end up as completely divergent characters.

2. FESTE THE
CLOWN.

2.1. A foolish fool?

Following the Oxford English
Dictionary on Historical Principles the word “fool” can mean: 1.“a silly
person”; 2. “one who professionally counterfeits folly for the entertainment of
others, a jester or clown”; 3. “one who has little or no reason or intellect”;
4. “one who is made to appear to be a fool”. (www.field-of-themes.com).Though Feste
is more closely related to the second meaning of the word, Elisabethans were
familiar with all of them and they would usually come across with characters who
would play the part of the fool, and who could be said to have such
characteristics as the ones given by the Oxford English Dictionary. Besides,
“In the English literature, the two main ways which the fool could enter
imaginative literature is that he could provide a topic, a theme for meditation,
or he could turn into a stock character on the stage, a stylized comic figure”
(www.field-of-themes.com). Feste is everything but a stock character. Stock
characters are usually flat characters who do not undergo any kind of
development throughout the play and whose presence, though patent in the play,
is not essential to the story line nor to the action. Feste is a wise character,
probably the wisest of the play, as Viola indicates after her first meeting with
him: “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool” (“Twelfth Night”, Act
III, Scene 1, line 21). His wit is also manifest when Feste talks to himself, or
rather to his wit, before encountering his lady Olivia who may turn him out for
disappearing without permission: “Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good
fooling: those wits that think they have thee, do very oft prove fools: and I
that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus,
Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit” (TN, I: V, 21-25). “These
lines indicate that Feste's presence is not merely comic relief through inane
acts and show that the role of the fool requires much intelligence. Feste is
also able to recognize and criticize the fools subject to foolery, the
self-proclaimed wits who are not witty at all. Since it is their lack of
self-knowledge what makes them fools.”
(www.wowessays.com).

These examples show that Feste,
differently from other fools or clowns depicted in the English literature, is
witty and intelligent. He needs to be so in order to carry out his duty as a
“licensed clown” and his function as a commentator in the play. Thus, he is able
to visualize the foolishness in the rest of the characters, and criticize their
actions, for instance when he mocks Olivia because she has been long mourning
for a brother who is in heaven and refers to her as a “fool”:

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mourn’st
thou?

Olivia: Goodfool, for my brother’s
death.

Clown: I think his soul is in hell,
Madonna.

Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven,
fool.

Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn
for your

Brother’s soul, being in
heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.”

(TN, I: V,
21-27)

2.2. The “sad clown”.

There is another aspect which has
been long discussed and that I am interested in: the sadness in Feste, who has
been referred to as the “sad clown”, “the person intelligent enough to see
through any of the easy superficial solutions to life's pains but wise enough to
understand that there is little use in protesting the tribulations of human life
(since that leads to self-destructive tragic conclusions).
(Johnston)

Feste is a rather melancholic clown,
as may be inferred from his songs. From the information in the play we learn
that he is probably a middle-age man, apparently he has been working in Olivia’s
household for a long time, as it is mentioned by Curio: “A fool that the Lady
Olivia’s father took much delight in.” (TN, II: IV, 24-25, p. 51)

The fact that he is not a young
fellow any more may be the reason why he
“sings a
song that is a testament to carpe diem”
(http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net)

The fact is that Feste’s claim for
the enjoyment of the moment and youth conceals a bitter raison d’être, which is
that time passes by inevitably. There is an ironic tone in his songs that
provides the play with a bitter-sweet ending. The play is a comedy because it
has a happy ending; actually it is Feste in one of his songs who foreshadows the
happy ending:

“The ending is structurally comic in a
very conventional way (lovers reunited, villain no longer present, marriages
pending), but the ironic undertones of his presence, more than anything else,
inject a note of fragility into the proceedings, not enough to destroy the joy,
of course, but sufficiently strong to cast some shadows around the young
lovers.” (Johnston)

2.3. Feste: an omniscient
presence.

There is an interesting
interpretation about Feste’s presence within “Twelfth Night” that regards him as
an omniscient figure who is able to peep at everyone and watch all the actions
taking place even though he is not on stage. The best example to support this
idea is found in Act 3, when the clown says to Viola, disguised as Cesario:

Although we are not completely sure
of Feste’s intention when remarking that Viola does not have a beard, it is very
possible that he did so because he knew, or at least suspected, that Cesario was
in fact a woman. Shakespeare may have wanted to provide Feste with a wider view
and knowledge of all the characters, since he is the one to carry out the
judgements on the other characters. . “In Trevor Nunn's film
adaptation, Ben Kingsley is constantly present in the scenes that reveal the
plot, from the very beginning where he watches Viola arrive in
Illyria to watching Olivia and Sebastian
marry outside the chapel.” (wikipedia.org)

This is just an interpretation very
much subject to checking, however, I agree with some of the reasons which
motivate it. Firstly, it is worth noting that Feste is not involved emotionally
with any of the characters in the action. This is the fact which supports the
idea commented a few paragraphs before that Feste is not a participant but
rather a commentator of the action. This gives him the status of a character
placed above the action. Secondly, he is in contact with all the characters in
the play since he has access to both houses: Orsino’s and Olivia’s. In this way
he knows everyone in the play and can infer more information about them than any
other character. Finally, and in spite of interacting with all the characters,
it is his ability to avoid attachment to them which allows him to become a
critic of their actions. “It is (…) his licensed foolery that enables him to
become a critic on the actions of others and allows his character to thrive. It
is through this commentary that Feste can assert his true wit over the true
foolishness of the other characters. His insightful dialogue provides criticism
and interpretation of the central events of the comedy.” (www.wowessays.com)

3. FESTE AND PUCK: A JESTER AND A
JOKER.

Both Feste and Puck are adjacent
characters to the story whose function turns out to be essential for the action
of the play. Though they are provided with a different hue, they both belong to
the same color. I will focus here on the similarities held by these two charming
and complicated characters and to what point they differ in what they resemble.

They are both under someone else’s
orders, Olivia’s, in the case of Feste and Oberon’s in the case of Puck.
However, both of them get into trouble with their masters just for the same
reason: they act rather freely for a servant. Feste leaves without permission,
blatantly ignoring his mistress rules. Puck mistakes Oberon’s orders and applies
the juice to the wrong young boy, not caring about the mortals’ fate. They also
reconcile with their masters later on, by using each their best strategy: Feste
wittily holds a conversation with Olivia that makes her forget about his misdeed
and Puck uses his management of magic to sort the situation out.They both love to play pranks on the
rest of the characters and humor is their most important trait. Nevertheless,
Feste proves to be a more malevolent or rather self-conscious figure than Puck.
While Puck simply does not care about humans and plays pranks on them just for
fun, Feste takes revenge on those characters he is not in good terms with, like
for instance Malvolio. “Despite Feste's playful and outwardly
frivolous nature (…) he has a very much darker and more mysterious side to him.
Malvolio's insulting account to Olivia of Feste's defeat in a battle of wits by
a village idiot obviously makes Feste angry and he joins in with a plot of
revenge against the arrogant steward conducted chiefly by Maria and Sir Toby
Belch.” (wikipedia.org). This is, from my point of view, the aspect in where
both characters mainly withdraw from each other, that is, their inner motivation
for their actions. In my paper about Puck I stated as one of my main points that
"Shakespeare’s Puck is not a malevolent character but a prankish figure that
misleads the “fool mortals” more by accident than on purpose (...) what
motivates Puck to enjoy any messy situation he is involved in, is his necessity
of having fun, and what leads him to fix it up is his inevitable sympathy for
humans." However, Feste is more caustic and the reason for his unkind
treatment of other characters is not motivated by his carelessness for them or
even clumsiness (as in the case of Puck) but more by a conscious act of truth
revelation, as he does with Malvolio. He is, as we have said, a very wise
character, and since he has access to the rest of the characters, he is able to
judge them and criticize them. The interesting point here is that, while on the
one hand Puck was expected to be a malevolent figure, due to the traditional
character Elisabethans were familiar with (let us remember that "all along
the English tradition Puck has been regarded as a devil. In fact, Pouk was a
traditional medieval term for the devil."(www.boldoutlaw.com), he ended
up being rather a prankish figure than a devilish one within "A Midsummer
Night's Dream". And on the other hand, Feste, whose nature was apparently more
playful (due to his profession) becomes, along "Twelfth Night", a slightly
tragic character provided with a dark side. However, even this trait may seem a
difference between them, it is actually a parallelism of the way they develop
into something distinct, or rather the contrary of what they seemed to be.

There is another similarity between
these two characters which has to do with the way Shakespeare sets a contrast
between them and the other figures. In "Twelfth Night", "Shakespeare's
contrast of Feste's true wit with the unconscious and actual foolishness of the
others is the focal contribution of his role to the factual insight of this
play." (www.wowessays.com).
On the other hand, the
character of Puck serves the purpose of trivializing love affairs by contrasting
his indifference towards those matters with the mix-ups and confusing situations
that mortals undergo because of love. Let us not forget one of the main
sentences by Puck in the play: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (MND,
III: II, 28, p. 56). We may then conclude that, the ones playing the part of the
fools or jesters, that is, those related to pranks and jokes, are not the
ignorant characters, but rather serve the purpose of making the audience realize
about the other characters' stupidity.

We may also compare these two
characters with regard to their presence in the plays. I have dealt with the
interpretation of Feste as an omniscient presence. Whether we support this
interpretation or not, there are evidences in the play that prove that Feste
knows more than would be expected if we take into account his appearances on
stage. I have also said that he is in contact with both houses and, thus, knows
all the characters surrounding him. Puck has also access to both worlds: the
fairy world and the mortals' world. He is, actually, the only figure in the play
to interact, either directly or indirectly (as he does with humans), with all
the characters, whether they are fairies or mortals. Puck can be easily said to
be an omniscient presence, as well as Oberon, since they are able to peep at the
mortal's world. They are placed above the real world so they can see the action
without being noticed. Besides, as happened with Feste, Puck does not involve
himself emotionally with other characters in the play. He is, then, rather an
observer than a participant of the action, in the same way that Feste was a
commentator.

Finally, there is something that
joins them together and reveals the fact that both, Feste and Puck, have an
essential role in their respective plays: they are the last characters to speak.
Puck is responsible for the epilogue in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Feste
sings one of his songs right at the very end of “Twelfth Night”.Even though this does not necessarily
mean that they are the main characters of both plays, it is in fact, an evidence
of how unique and extraordinary they are. Their last speeches encode a message.
“Puck makes a speech
explaining his actions that serves to trivialize the play itself if it has
offended the audience.”(libertyfund.org). “Feste's final
song lessens the hope of a completely happy ending. The purpose of this song,
which states the rain it raineth every day, insinuates that at any time the
happiness that now occupies the characters in Illyria could at any time be swept
away.”
(www.wowessays.com)

4. CONCLUSION

Through this paper I have analyzed
the character of Feste and I have reached the conclusion that definitely he is
an irreplaceable figure. He is responsible for part of the comic tone of the
play due to his puns and jokes. Within the play he plays his part as a clown
entertaining other characters, but outside the play, he has a different role,
which is to entertain the audience of the play (us) and comment on the action
for the public to follow every detail. He is the character who, at times,
introduces a feeling of melancholy and even bitterness through his songs. He is
a witty jester whose wisdom may be due to his age and his experience. He plays
with words though knowing that words may lead to confusion, though that is
exactly what he tries to do, to confuse and play pranks on the other characters
using language wittily.

Feste is not a traditional clown,
and his presence drains the comic tone of the play. He is the figure who
presents reality just as it is, and tries to present mean just as they are. This
is clearly seen in his last song, where he tries to be realistic about life,
though some negativity is concealed regarding the future. He states that the
world has been running for a long time, and nothing will change but continue
just the way it has always been, and so it will happen with men.

Finally, the parallelism between
Puck and Feste is evident; however, Puck and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are, in
general, more optimistic and comic, while Feste and “Twelfth Night” leave us
with a bitter-sweet end, in spite of being a comedy.I believe this may be caused by
Shakespeare’s own feelings. He wrote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” between 1594
and 1597, and “Twelfth Night” between the years 1601 and 1608. This means he was
younger when he wrote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and maybe his opinion about
life and love was more romantic and, thus, more optimistic than a few years
later. This could explain why there is such a difference at the end of these
plays, being both of them comedies. I think Shakespeare’s view point in real
life influenced his comedies and, in this way, we get two happy endings with
different expectations.